Here I will post some short pieces on Sarala Mahabharata. Sarala Das is known as the "aadikavi" (the first poet) of Oriya Literature. He lived and wrote in the 15th Century. Mahabharat is his magnum opus. The episodes in Sarala's Mahabharat are significantly different from those in Vyasa's (Sanskrit) Mahabharat.

Monday, November 30, 2015

According to Sarala Mahabharata, in the Kurukshetra
War, there were five of them: Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Salya and Aswasthama – in
this order. It was his greatest misfortune that the Kaurava king, Duryodhana, had
these very eminent men as his commanders-in-chief. Salya was undoubtedly a very
great warrior but the other four belonged to a different class altogether: the
class of the invincible. Each one of them had infallible divine weapons. And Bhishma
had an incomparable protection – it was “given” in a sense by his mother, not
willfully though, and it was something he certainly would never have asked for.
This said, protection it indeed was in a fight: he would die only when he chose
to die. Drona could be killed only when he had no weapons in his hand. That would
be when he was engaged in worship, having food, was asleep or engaged in sex, the
last of which was only a technical matter because his wife had passed away a
long time ago while giving birth to Aswasthama. But then killing was adharma
precisely in these situations. Although Karna had someone equal to him in the enemy
side, namely, Arjuna, he had Indra’s infallible weapon with him and he had
decided to use it against Arjuna. As for Aswasthama, he was immortal because of
the Creator god, Brahma’s boon. These illustrious men were well-educated,
well-versed in the shastras and had a keen sense of discrimination. Bhishma,
Drona and Karna had tried to live virtuous lives. The same however cannot be
said for Aswasthama; he was far too ambitious and jealous, and had too little
self-control for a life of dharma. One would expect that if an army had such warriors
in its midst, then nothing could deny it victory. But one after the other these
great warriors fell and the Kaurava army was wiped out.

Come to think of it, the Kauravas had lost
even before the war started. As the Kaurava warriors met to work out strategies
for the War, the great Bhurishrava told Duryodhana that he and many like him
had come to fight for him, not because they would or could bring him victory.
They were there to die, looking at Krishna on Arjuna’s chariot, which would bring
them moksa (freedom from the cycle of life and death). Responding to this, Bhishma
assured king Duryodhana that he would kill the Pandavas. But on the battlefield
Duryodhana saw a Bhishma he surely would not have expected to see. Before the
war started, Yudhisthira had gone to the Kaurava side of the battlefield and
most humbly paid his respects to Bhishma, Drona. Karna and Aswasthama, among
others and sought their blessings for victory and they all blessed him for it. In
our puranic literature, Duryodhana alone had this unique and entirely unenviable
experience of witnessing the invincible among his warriors blessing his enemy
for victory. Let us not argue that in the deafening noise of the
battlefield he did not hear what the eldest Pandava was saying to his maharathis (great warriors) and what
each of them was saying to him In Sarala
Mahabharata there is clear evidence that he was not unaware of all this. The
poet does not tell us how he took it, what he felt.

But there was more. After receiving his blessings,
Yudhisthira asked Bhishma how he could be defeated, being invincible, so that
his blessing would materialize and he asked the same question to Drona as well.
Both told him that they could be defeated only when they were without weapons,
and each hinted at how this could happen in the battlefield in his case.
Yudhisthira didn’t ask Karna the same question. He couldn’t have, because he
was his elder brother. He simply pleaded with him to come to his side, fight along
with his own brothers and rule the kingdom after the War, but Karna said he
could not abandon Duryodhana. We don’t know why Yudhisthira didn’t ask
Aswasthama how he could be defeated – may be because unlike Bhishma, who was
his grandfather, and Drona, who was his guru, he had no special or particularly
affectionate relationship with him which would give him the right to ask such a
question. Duryodhana knew what all Bhishma and Drona had told Yudhisthira and
he knew about Karna what everyone knew, namely that he was Kunti’s eldest son.

But about Karna what he did not know,
neither did anyone in his army, was that he had given word to Kunti on the eve
of the war that he would not kill any Pandava other than Arjuna - she had five
sons before the War and would also have five sons after the War. From one point
of view there was nothing new about it for Duryodhana. Karna had always told him
that he would kill Arjuna. He had never said anything about the other Pandavas.
If Duryodhana had assumed that this did not mean that he would not kill any
other Pandava in a conclusive war against the Pandavas, he was not unjustified.
But sometimes such assumptions do not amount to much. Duryodhana knew only half
the truth. And knowing half of the truth could sometimes turn out to be very damaging
and hurtful; when the other half surfaces one would feel like being stabbed in the
back.

The less said about Salya, may be the better.
He came to join the Pandavas’ army but by mistake, for which he should be held
fully responsible, he joined the Kauravas’. He never wanted the Kauravas to win
and this was no secret to anyone. Still he fought with all his might when he
became the Commander-in-Chief. In Sarala
Mahabharata his was a strange end. During those seventeen days of the War, barring
Karna, he was the only warrior on the Kaurava side who was in an excellent
position to imprison Yudhisthira. On the seventeenth day he defeated him,
disarmed him and was dragging him by his hair. Out of pain the virtuous nephew
cried out “mamu jalila jalila”, the
utterance which turned out to be fatal for the uncle. One meaning of it is that Yudhisthira was experiencing searing
pain, as though he was burning all over, and the other is that he was screaming,
as though for everyone’s attention, that his uncle was burning. The virtuous
man’s words, whether deliberate or not, could make things happen. And destiny
chose the second meaning to materialize. As he uttered “mamu jalila jalila” (Uncle (is) burning, burning), uncle Salya
started burning and was soon consumed by fire.

This is the end of Salya’s story, sad and somewhat rather comical but not un-heroic. this is the story of a man who was consumed by the
feeling of guilt for fighting against the Pandavas, who had tried to make
amends when he was Karna’s charioteer and his treacherous tormentor and who had
tried to redeem himself by fighting honestly on that day when the words of his
virtuous nephew reduced him to ashes. Like Bhishma’s, Drona’s and Karna’s, his
is also the story of a Commander-in-Chief who fought valiantly for one side but most piously wished
for the other to win.

Unlike in Vyasa Mahabharata, in Sarala’s version, Bhishma had not constrained
himself not to kill a Pandava. He wanted the Pandavas to win but he himself was
not going to spare them on the battlefield. In fact he had declared his
intention to kill them. One day he shot an infallible divine arrow at Arjuna,
which he did not know how to neutralize, but midway it inexplicably
disappeared. Neither Bhishma’s nor any mortal’s eye saw what had happened. But Bhishma,
knew Krishna – the bhakta knew Bhagawan and he knew that destroying his arrow
was the avatara’s doing. He had created five special arrows with which to kill
the Pandavas on the ninth day of the War, but in Sarala Mahabharata whoever proposes, Krishna disposes. Thus on the
night before the ninth day, Bhishma found himself obliged, ignoring details, to
destroy those weapons himself.

The Pandavas knew that they had to bring
Shikhandi to Bhishma’s presence. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Kaurava army, he
made no special efforts to avoid this to happen. One could say in his defence that
he really couldn’t have done much. The Commander-in-Chief couldn’t have hidden
himself as Jayadratha did later. He would have fallen very low in his own eyes.
Besides, if not on the tenth day, on the eleventh, the twelfth or some other
day he would have run into Shikhandi, if merely by accident. Making this happen
would have become the sole aim of the Pandavas, he knew; so avoiding meeting
Shikhandi would have become increasingly difficult. Besides, the
Commander-in-Chief of that great army could not surely afford to design a
long-term strategy for avoiding a particular warrior - and a comparatively
insignificant one at that - on the battlefield!

Now granted that he had promised not to fight
against a woman (anyway, there was nothing special in it as it was part of the
ethics of war those days). However in Sarala
Mahabharata everyone knew that prince Shikhandi had become a man and would
remain a man till his death. In Sarala’s version Bhishma seemed to have felt a
sense of guilt or at least some strong uneasiness bordering on guilt, about the
way he had treated her when she was Amba in her earlier birth and wanted to
compensate her, as it were, in her present birth. It appears that he secretly wanted
to be her target. So despite her having become a man, he wanted to look upon
her as a woman. He almost wanted an excuse, as it were, so that Amba could have
her revenge.

From one point of view, this attitude is
unimpeachable for Bhishma, the wise and virtuous person. There is something spiritually
elevating about a person feeling guilty about being the cause of another’s
misery, or being even thought of by the sufferer as such and willing to make
amends. But Bhishma was not merely a private person; he was also the leader of
the Kaurava army in the final war that had started. He was surely aware that
the morale of the Kaurava army would plummet to the lowest depths in the event
of his fall. He was also thought of as invincible and as the one who death
could not visit without his wish. He should not have, almost by design, demoralized
those he was leading in the battlefield. He had no justification for treating
Shikhandi as a woman because he knew she had become a man. He chose to put the
personal factor above duty as the leader of the Kaurava army, a role and a responsibility
he had voluntarily accepted. One might wonder whether he was fair to those who had
trusted him and whether he hadn’t betrayed them.

In Vyasa
Mahabharata Drona was unwilling to kill the Pandava brothers, but his
declared goal as the Commander-in-Chief was to imprison Yudhisthira. Sarala’s Drona
was no different. This stand is unintelligible with respect to the logic of the
war, but entirely understandable from a personal point of view. He was the
teacher and the preceptor of the Kauravas, the Pandavas, and Aswasthama, Karna,
Dhristadyumna and Shikhandi. Perhaps he thought that if he had to join the war,
at least he would choose not to harm his virtuous students himself. He was aware – who
was not! - that Dhristadyumna was born to kill him, but he had no ill feelings
about him at all on that account.

Imprisoning Yudhisthira was a formidable
task, and soon the guru realized that Arjuna’s absence from the battlefield was
absolutely necessary to weaken the protective cover around Yudhisthira. So
Duryodhana successfully arranged Arjuna’s absence from the battlefield for one
day and on that day the Kaurava warriors succeeded to separate Abhimanyu from
the rest of the Pandavas, but subsequent to this, there was no attempt to
imprison Yudhisthira. The great warriors remained focused on Abhimanyu and
forgot their main goal. Killing Abhimanyu became not just the goal, but the sole
obsession. This is not understandable given the fact that Drona was a great
strategist and a highly composed person. In his army was Jayadrath who enjoyed
Shiva’s boon that he would be able to defeat the Pandavas except Arjuna. He was
the one who cut off contact between the Pandavas and Abhimanyu. Drona did not
exploit the situation that day to defeat Yudhisthira. There would always be a
nagging doubt about whether the guru was ever sincere in imprisoning the eldest
Pandava. The best one could say for Drona is that he lost his focus overtaken
by the unpredictable things that happened in the battlefield that day.
Abhimanyu was not someone who had figured in his plans and strategies for that
day.

But he imprisoned Yudhisthira in a different
way. Not willingly. Not even aware that he was doing so. When he wanted to know
whether his son had died, he sought Yudhisthira. He was certain that his ever
truthful pupil would never tell a lie - that too for mere victory in the War. When
he asked Yudhisthira whether what he heard about his son having died was true,
his question was like an arrow that could fetter the target. It did; when
Yudhisthira compromised with the truth, his chariot which had moved without
touching the ground touched it. He was no more above the ordinary mortal in moral stature. In Swargarohana Parva, Sarala Mahabharata says that that was the virtuous man’s only moral
failure.

It was a strange act on the part of the
Commander-in-Chief. There were obviously other ways to find out whether his son
had died. It would have meant a little waiting perhaps, which would have been
painful, but it would have been well worth it. What was hanging in the balance was
the fate of the Kaurava army. He was not just a father, but the
Commander-in-Chief of a mighty army, which had many fathers fighting, none of
them having the luxury of retiring from the War on hearing about his beloved
son’s death. It is very unfortunate for an army when its supreme commander
enters the battlefield with such a pledge. In a war, in which one’s son was
participating, it was by no means unlikely that he might be killed. The
decision to abandon the army one was leading on hearing about a warrior’s death
on the battlefield was surely unfair to the army. Besides, the father who went to
a war with such a decision jeopardized his son’s life, particularly when the
enemy knew about it. Didn’t Drona do precisely that when he told the Pandavas
that he would give up weapons on learning that his son was dead?

Incidentally, he knew that his son was
immortal. In Sarala Mahabharata,
Aswasthama had practised tapas to attain immortality, following his doting
father’s advice. He had pleased god Brahma himself with his tapas and had
obtained that boon from him. Why then was his father worried about his life? He
had told Yudhisthira in the Kurukshetra battlefield that he would give up his
weapons if he learnt that his son was no more. Why did he think in such terms?
Why was he insecure, knowing that his son was blessed with this boon from
Brahma himself? Sarala Mahabharata
says nothing about it.

Was it because he knew that his son was
extremely ambitious, haughty, irresponsible and lacked self-control? A
knowledgeable person, he knew that there were asuras and asuris who had
been almost identically blessed by Brahma and Shiva but they had all perished
because of their adharma. As Holika screamed in pain when fire was consuming
her, her fond brother must have wondered how Brahma’s boon turned out to be so
ineffectual. The indulgent father knew the limitations of Paramapita Brahma’s
boons and he knew his son’s weaknesses. Was this why he was so insecure about
his son’s life?

Was this really the reason why Drona had
more trust in Yudhisthira’s words than in Brahma’s boon? The celebrated text
says nothing about it. It doesn’t even provide a weak clue. It leaves the
answer to the hearer’s or the reader’s understanding and imagination. One gets
the uneasy feeling that having joined a war which he wanted his enemy to win the
venerable guru was looking for an excuse to opt out of it by sacrificing
himself!

As for Karna, everyone knew that he was the
eldest of Kunti’s sons but was fighting against them. No one doubted his
commitment to the Kaurava side. Shortly before the War his mother Kunti had asked
him for a dana. The mother is also a
guru. Karna gave her the dana: he
would not kill any of the Pandavas except Arjuna. As the desired daksina, he gave his mother two
infallible divine weapons, which disempowered him with respect to Arjuna. There
is no evidence in Sarala’s narrative that Karna told about this to Duryodhana.
The Pandavas of course knew it all, as did Vidura, the former because at
Krishna’s advice they had sent their mother to Karna for those specific dana and daksina. In case Karna did not agree to join them, his own brothers,
she should ask these from him, they had specifically told her. When she went to
meet Karna, she had taken Vidura with him. Karna’s not sharing these bits of
significant information with Duryodhana was unfair to him, to say the least.

The death of any Pandava would have been disastrous
for the Pandavas. Killing of Yudhisthira would have meant the death of the one
who was to be the king and the death of Bhima would have weakened the Pandavas greatly.
The killing of Nakula and Sahadeva would have been no less disastrous. Sahadeva
was the one who knew the past and the future, and this knowledge helped the
Pandavas a great deal during the War. In Sarala’s version, as in the canonical,
Karna could have killed any of them, but he did not, because of his word to his
mother. His lack of will to kill any of them was unintelligible to whoever was
witness to the engagements of Karna with them. He didn’t imprison any of them
either, which he was in a position to do. He must have feared that the
imprisoned Pandava or the Pandavas would be put to death by Duryodhana, a
situation he could not afford to arise - he had given word to his mother that
after the War five of her children would remain alive. As a devoted son he did
his duty to his mother, as a dani’s (giver
of dana), he performed his duty to
the receiver of the dana but as the
Commander-in-Chief didn’t he betray the King and the army he was leading?

As for Aswasthama, he left the battlefield in
deep sorrow, disgust and frustration after failing to destroy the Pandavas by
the divine arrow called narayanastra
(weapon of Narayana). When he heard that his father had been killed by low deceit,
he completely lost his sense of discrimination and used that arrow against the
Pandavas. He failed because of Krishna’s intervention - Narayana knew how to
neutralize narayanaastra. Aswasthama never
had any great motivation to fight in this War as he had never looked upon the
Pandavas as his enemy. His father’s killing in that entirely unethical manner
gave him a reason to fight. We might recall that Yudhisthira had sought his
blessings and like his father, he too had blessed him for victory. Till his
father’s death he was in the War because his father was in the War. Of course once
in the War, the ambitious Aswasthama wanted to lead the Kaurava army and told
Duryodhana that if he made him the leader, he would bring him victory. But
Duryodhana refused him that exalted status. He had no respect for him as a
warrior. Having chosen the dharma of a ksatriya,
he should not have tried to protect himself with the boon of immortality. This
Duryodhana considered a disgrace for a warrior.

When he heard that Duryodhan was mortally
wounded and was awaiting death, he rushed to see him. He had learnt that he too
had been unfairly hit. He was filled with righteous anger, which could be
particularly dangerous because it would lead one to act under the illusion that
even the most unacceptable act of his would have moral justification. Aswasthama
requested Duryodhana to make him the Commander-in-Chief. He said he would kill
the Pandavas if he had that status. Duryodhana agreed. There was no army for him to
lead, but that did not matter to Aswsthama. A warrior like him needed no army.

He went to the Pandava camp that night. He
expected the Pandavas to be there but only their five sons were there. This he
did not know. In the camp, he killed his father’s killer, Dhristadyumna, the
Pandavas’ Commander-in-Chief, like one would an animal, and then killed Shikhandi,
and then the sleeping sons of the Pandavas, mistaking them to be the Pandavas.
When in the morning Duryodhana found that the severed heads Aswasthama had
brought him were the heads of Draupadi’s children, he condemned him for
destroying his clan, regretted his decision to make him the Commander-in-Chief
and dismissed him from his presence. His fifth and last Commander-in-Chief had
the motivation to kill the Pandavas but ended up in hurting Duryodhana at the
time of his death. Duryodhana was the most unfortunate in him.

In contrast, the Pandavas lost their
Commander-in-chief only after the War, as mentioned above. None of the Pandavas
were handicapped by ethical considerations in the battlefield. They
incapacitated Bhishma, killed Drona and Karna when they were without weapons,
in blatant violation of the ethics of all wars including that War, and killed
Duryodhana in a totally impermissible manner. True, Yudhistira and Arjuna had
both strong hesitations before the killing of Drona and Karna; the former did
not want to tell a lie to his guru and the latter did not want to kill Karna
when he was unarmed, but they had no repentance later. Bhima had no regrets
over the adharmic way he killed Duryodhana. He had no regrets over the brutal
dismemberment of Dussasana. Yudhisthira, defeated and wounded by Karna,
condemned, in the harshest of language, both Arjuna and Krishna for their inability
to kill him. If Draupadi brayed for Dussasana’s blood, Kunti brayed for
Duryodhana’s blood. Kunti’s language upset even Bhima. The enemy had to be
crushed and the War had to be won. Under Krishna’s guidance the Pandavas practised
the dharma of war, which calls for placing the war duties over personal considerations.
Once in a war, the logic of the war demands that yuddha (war) dharma must supersede sadharana (ordinary, day-to-day) dharma. Rejection of yuddha dharma by the eventual victor for
sadharana dharma is hardly to come by
not just in Mahabharata but in the entire gamut of puranic literature as well.

To see war in perspective, it is not really
commended as a sensible and desirable solution to social or political problems in
any version of Mahabharata, certainly not in Sarala’s. Sarala Mahabharata upholds tyaga
(sacrifice) as the best solution although admittedly an extremely difficult
one. It requires courage and conviction of a spiritual nature. One has to willingly
give up one’s legitimate rights and ego for the cause of peace. Pandu, the
father of the Pandavas, embodied this attitude. He abdicated in favour of his
elder brother Dhritarastra when he found him unhappy about his not being the
king despite being the eldest prince in the family. He happily left the palace
to live in the forest with his wives, Kunti and Madri. Not just that. He volunteered
to protect the kingdom from the forest on his brother’s behalf because he was
blind. But the tyaga option must be
chosen before the war, not during the war. For war not be inevitable, there
must be an alternative in the form of a Pandu.

5 comments:

Excellent posts Sir. Your posts show a maturity and perspective that is lacking in most blogs. Could you enlighten me as to whether any details of Duryodhana's or Karna's wives are there in Sarala Mahabharata?

Sarala Mahabharata describes the wedding of Duryodhana and Bhanumati. Bhanumati is one of the noblest characters in this narrative, probably the noblest. Like a virtuous wife, she offers good advice to Duryodhana but he does not listen to her. She is entirely without malice. She is also a wise mother.

She rushed into the Kaurava court virtually naked when her palace was on fire emerging out of Draupadi's eyes. Her husband tried to get Draupadi disrobed but things turned out in such a way that his action recoiled on his virtuous wife.

If Bhanumati were in control, arguably there would have been no Kurukshetra war.

Her character has not been fully developed in Sarala Mahabharata.

As for Karna's wife (wives) they have not been assigned any prominence in the story. I do remember a mention of her. She again was a virtuous person, doing whatever would please her husband. She played no political role in the narrative. I will read her story story and will write a post on her. I will let you know.